Another coalition of inclusive, Black Chicago-area clergy members announced their support for the marriage bill yesterday, report the Chicago Sun-Times, Tribune and Northwest Herald. The pastors called the bill "a bold step forward for equality."

The Rev. Carlton Pearson, a Pentecostal minister,
called the issue a win-win situation and said there are far more black
pastors in Chicago who support the bill but are afraid to come forward. "I think no one here is worried about whether
there’s going to be backlash or not, or we wouldn’t be here," [said the Rev. Richard Tolliver, pastor of St. Edmund’s Episcopal Church on the South Side] said. "There will be people who are supportive. There will be people who
are not supportive. Our hearts are where they are."

The Rev. Phyllis Pennese, the openly gay pastor of
two south suburban churches, said she’s not worried about pastors
opposing the bill: "There are more people behind justice than Rev. Meeks
could ever drum up to be against justice regardless of what their faith
tradition or what their faith commitment is."

One of the strongest statements in support of equality came from the Rev. L. Bernard Jakes of West Point Missionary Baptist Church in
Chicago , who noted that many Black LGBT are "active in the
African-American church", reported the Tribune. West Point MBC was once the home of gospel legend Albertina Walker.

"Many of the same-gendered loving couples love Jesus as much as I, and they believe in Scripture with the same fervor by which I believe.Their only legal lot in life is they are prevented from sharing in a life-long legal commitment with their partner — many of double-digit years. This is what makes it a matter of civil rights," he wrote.

Illinois' Black civic and political leadership was firmly behind the landmark 2010 vote on civil unions. Rev. Meeks was the only Black in the General Assembly to vote against that bill. Will the narrative change? Of the 20 members of the Illinois House Black Caucus, "only one of the 14 House co-sponsors is Black," notes the Tribune. Many Black politicians have reportedly said they "fear political repercussions."

Ministers opposed to
same-sex marriage have warned legislators who vote for it to never come
back to their churches, where politicians traditionally campaign on the
final Sundays before an election. "It’s a
little disheartening," said Democratic state Rep. Will Davis, a Black
caucus member who has not made up his mind as he works out whether gay
marriage is a moral or public policy issue.

"There are so many
large-scale issues important to the Black community, but you’ve never
heard from them," Davis said of the churches opposed to gay marriage. "This doesn’t create jobs. It doesn’t create opportunities and, for the
most part, they are silent on helping African-Americans getting job
opportunities in this state. They are silent on the increasing prison
population.”

"When I saw that the lawmakers were excited about passing legislation
about same-sex marriage, it’s a slap in the face of the Bible,” said Rev. Lance Davis, bishop of New Zion Christian Fellowship
Covenant Church in Dolton."I didn’t see that kind of enthusiasm about
stopping children from killing children in the streets."

Illinois would become the second state after Iowa to approve equal marriage in the nation's heartland. Same-sex
couples can now legally marry in nine states—Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
New York, Vermont, Washington—and the District of Columbia.

Mental health remains largely absent from public debate across the Black community. This is despite data that show Blacks "are 20% more likely to report having serious psychological distress than Whites" and mental health care disparities are even more pronounced among Black and Latino children.

There has been a national outcry for
increased access to mental health treatment in the wake of the Aurora
and Newtown shootings. But in Chicago—whose gun-violence murder rate last year
was the equivalent of "a Newtown [massacre] every four months"—has seen a steady decrease in funding to mental health programs.

“From 2009 to 2012, state leaders cut roughly $187 million from state-sponsored programs,” according to a report by the National Alliance on Mental Illness. That’s just over thirty percent of its mental health budget. Today, Illinois “has the dubious distinction”
of ranking third in the nation when it comes to states with the highest
dollar amounts cut from mental health programs. Further, six of Chicago's twelve mental health care facilities have been closed down by the state, including facilities in the heart of the city's Black community on the South Side.

"The shutdowns would affect 30,000 students, almost all in kindergarten
through eighth grade and most now attending poorly performing schools in
African-American neighborhoods on the South and West sides where
enrollment has sagged in recent years,” reported the Chicago Tribune

.As we reported last week, nearly 90 percent of the students in the closed schools will be Black. The proposed closings contrast to citywide data, where only 41.7 percent of CPS students are Black. "This is definitely a race and class issue," Wanda Hopkins, education
coordinator of the South Austin Coalition Community Council, told
EBONY. "We’re fighting this."

The neighborhoods affected most by the closings are escribed by the Chicago Sun-Times as among the city’s "poorest communities." These are also among the city’s “most violent neighborhoods” and hard-hit by gang violence, as reported last week at EBONY.com.

Chicago has become the epicenter
of national discourse over gun violence, though the sympathy and horror
alloted to victims of mass shootings in Aurora and Newtown evade the
city. Black youth have been hardest hit: "More young people are killed in Chicago than any other American city," notes the Chicago Reporter,
a local investigative journal. From 2008 to 2012, "more than 530 youth
[were] killed in Chicago with nearly 80 percent....on the city’s South
and West Sides."

The radio ads and “robo-calling” [target] residents in black communities urging them to ask their representatives to vote against the bill. A new group called the African American Clergy Coalition said it began airing 60-second commercials Tuesday on black radio stations and also plans a “street campaign” to supplement the telephone campaign. The
phone messages feature the voice of former state Sen. James Meeks, who
is senior pastor of Chicago’s Salem Baptist Church.

The pastors working to defeat gay marriage are joined in their opposition by Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, the Catholic Conference of Illinois and Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

The majority of Black legislators from the Chicago-area are expected to support the marriage bill.

The radio campaign actually began on Monday. Two ads aired during my Monday segment on WVON 1690, the well-known Black talk radio station. So far, the audio has not been posted online but I'll keep looking ...

The organization issued a statement on the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act, highlighting disparities among Black LGBT people and pushing lawmakers to vote in favor of the bill. The statement notes that Black gay man face elevated discrimination and stigma.

"We have fought for issues of justice and equality as members of the broader LGBT community—from Stonewall, to the elimination of anti-gay policies, to the fight to reduce HIV incidence and other health disparities," the statement reads. "We also know the history of our culture—from the Middle Passage, to slavery, to Jim Crow, to voting rights. At one time in American history, slaves were considered 3/5 of a person and were denied the right to marry. Only within the last half-century were inter-racial marriages fully legalized."

The statement goes on to argue that marriage recognition will improve the lives of LGBT youth, offering youth the "hope for societal legitimacy." "For LGBT youth of color who face bullying and violence, marriage equality offers a new hope for achieving the ultimate aspiration for their relationships and a legal foundation upon which they can build happy, loving families," the statement reads.

The Senate approved its marriage bill by a 34-21 vote on Valentine's Day. The bill awaits a floor vote in the House. Speaker Michael Madigan has acknowledged that passage will be "very difficult."

Illinois would become the second state after Iowa to approve equal marriage in the nation's heartland. Same-sex
couples can now legally marry in nine states—Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
New York, Vermont, Washington—and the District of Columbia.

A founder of the influential Bay Area gay rap group Deep Dickollective, West played an important role in challenging and expanding the definition of hip-hop (not to mention the definition of the Gay Black Man) and helping to create a new kind of landscape now occupied by artists as varied as Mykki Blanco and Frank Ocean. In his work at the Center, that kind of cred goes a long way.

West speaks with authority about the difficulties facing the young people who turn to the Center for help—the violence, the crime, the poverty. Such difficulties are often amplified for those who identify as anything other than straight. West understands their pain, and he wants his own experiences—specifically, his exploration of race and sexuality, and his success in using hip-hop as an unlikely tool to ease the tension between the two—to guide them.

"I protect and advocate and look out for their interests," he says. "They know I love them. They know I care about them, that I want them to thrive, that I hate a lot of the racism they have to face in Boystown, that I hate a lot of the homophobia they have to face in their own neighborhoods on the south and west sides." ...

Eventually, West discovered men similar to himself. He also came to fully understand who he was, thanks in no small part to the controversial 1989 PBS documentary Tongues Untied, which explored the hidden world of black gay men and HIV. The film made West realize that the "black gay identity can be political. It can be masculine. It can be a lot of different things."

After Duke, West attended the New School in New York City. Outside the comforting embrace of DEN, West turned his creative attention to spoken word, finding the more open gay culture surrounding poetry more welcoming than the still predominantly homophobic hip-hop scene. "Spoken-word culture became kind of a safe haven," West says.

West also offers his take on the Chicago gay hip-hip scene which he says "reminds him of the dynamic energy he found in the Bay Area in the early aughts. At the Center, West has built bridges with members of the scene, including the Freaky Boiz, who West says possess a deft understanding of 'the politics of representation.'"

The profile is very intriguing. In true Reader style, it's a long read but worth the time.

On a personal note: The Chicago Reader is where I started writing during college before my staff job at The Los Angeles Times and segueing into television news. If you want to turn on the wayyyy back machine, perform a search for some of my articles in the early 1990s. Fun times.

Illinois has moved one step closer to becoming the tenth state to mandate marriage equality after the House Executive Committee advanced the bill late last night. But the 6-5 vote and the words of one Democratic legislator could signal the bill could be "short of votes needed to pass the full chamber," reports the Chicago Sun-Times.

The Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act advanced out of the House Executive Committee on a 6-5 vote with the panel’s four Republicans voting against the plan. State Rep. Eddie Jackson (D-East St. Louis) was the lone Democrat on the panel to vote no.

"What we have here tonight is a chance to make an important step for the state of Illinois, to make Illinois a more just state, to make Illinois a state that respects all of its citizens equally under the law," said state Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago), the bill’s chief House sponsor.

Beyond Jackson, there were other fissures within the Democratic Party. Harris’ bill drew opposition from state Rep. Luis Arroyo (D-Chicago), who voted to let the legislation move to the House floor but said he likely wouldn’t be a supporter once it’s called for a final vote. "I don’t think I could vote for this bill on the floor of the House because of my religious beliefs and because of the churches in my district I represent and support," Arroyo said.

Testifying in support of the bill were two of the city's most prominent Black pastors. The Rev. R. Herbert Martin of the Progressive Community Church was former Mayor Harold Washington’s minister. The Rev. Otis Moss III is pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, which is President Barack Obama’s former church. Both churches are on the city's South Side.

"Today, as a son of the South, born in the little town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, the largest all-black town in America, also as a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather, an ordained member of the clergy and with an abiding conviction to justice and equality, I call upon you this evening to protect all Illinois residents under the law and support Senate Bill 10," said Rev. Martin.

Illinois would become the second state after Iowa to approve equal marriage in the nation's heartland. Same-sex
couples can now legally marry in nine states—Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
New York, Vermont, Washington—and the District of Columbia.

18 February 2013

The publisher of EBONY and JET Magazines expressed her support for marriage equality in a very moving Chicago Tribuneop-ed on Valentine’s Day. This was the same day the Illinois Senate approved its marriage bill by a 34-21 vote.

Johnson Publishing Company Chairman Linda Johnson Rice said her support for equality was inspired by her late mother.

When Eunice Johnson set up the first major fashion show for African-American audiences more than 50 years ago, she did so at a time when black Americans, especially black women, were still fighting for a seat at the table, any table. At the same time that white-run shows would get the very latest samples from the biggest fashion houses for free, my mother would pay hand over fist to dress her models. She put up with it because she knew it was important for her charity shows.

She always told me, "Linda, a person should be able to wear anything they want to wear. This is your plumage. This is how you feel about yourself." To my mother, even the worst kinds of unequal and unfair treatment shouldn't keep people from expressing their true colors.

And:

[JET] first featured a same-sex couple in August 2011, then again in March and December of 2012. When the December magazine hit newsstands, I received dozens of calls wondering whether our readers or advertisers protested. You know what? Not one did. They celebrated right along with us because they were celebrating fairness and equality.

Yet if the couples we featured walked into an Illinois courthouse and tried to get a marriage license, they'd be turned away. The same goes for couples in dozens of states. For millions of committed and loving same-sex couples, including African-American couples, fair and equal access to marriage is still a dream. For these couples, they can't show their true colors in the way my mother believed was absolutely essential. It's time to change that.

Mrs. Johnson created the Ebony Fashion Fair, a pioneering and iconic runway show that traveled across the United States from 1958 to 2009. Much more on Mrs. Johnson's legacy to fashion and the civil rights movement in an excellent report by the Wall Street Journal.

Also worth noting: EBONY profiles Robert Brown and Nathanael Gay in the February 2012 print edition. The video of Brown and Gay's beautiful wedding ceremony—nicknamed the "Kappa Wedding"—went viral across the internet and created some controversy.

14 February 2013

Illinois has moved one step closer to becoming the tenth and latest state to mandate marriage equality after the Senate approved its marriage bill by a 34-21 vote, reports the Sun-Times.

After a tearful closing statement by [chief sponsor Sen. Heather] Steans, applause erupted in the chamber the moment the roll call surpassed the necessary 30 votes it needed to move to the House.

But her bill was decried by a mostly unified Republican front as an affront to the Bible. "We are knocking down one of the central foundations of society with this bill," said state Sen. Dale Bivins (R-Dixon), a "no" vote who cited poet Robert Frost and the Scriptures in pushing the bill's defeat.

Others described Thursday's vote as a step similar to the epic civil rights battles of the 1950s and 1960s, when such racial disparities as bans on interracial marriages ultimately were set aside. "Martin Luther King once said, 'The moral arc of the universe is long, but it always bends toward justice,'" said Sen. Toi Hutchinson (D-Olympia Fields). "And today, we have an opportunity, each and every one of us, to put our hands on that arc and bend it toward what's fair and what's right," she said.

The roll call of the Valentine's Day vote is HERE. Two Democrats abstained and voted "present."

The legislation now moves to the Illinois House. Democrats maintain a super-majority in that chamber but a closer vote is expected, notes the Windy City Times.

LGBT leaders said that the level of
Senate support for the measure could forecast momentum in the House,
where a much tougher fight has been predicted.

[Chief sponsor Rep. Greg] Harris said he is not yet certain when the bill will come to a vote in
the house and declined to speculate on when sponsors would have the
votes secured. LGBT groups have said that the bill could be on Governor Quinn's desk
by the end of the month. Quinn strongly supports the legislation.

"This is an historic moment and
demonstrates once again that Illinois is the land of Lincoln. Fairness
justice and equality for all," said Rick Garcia, director of the Equal Marriage Illinois Project. "Just two years ago we thought this day
was years away. ... This is an important step, but there is still more work to do."

Illinois would become the second state after Iowa to approve equal marriage in the nation's heartland. Same-sex
couples can now legally marry in nine states—Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
New York, Vermont, Washington—and the District of Columbia.

The fact that Honey Dijon is transgender has caused barely a shrug in the widening circles that have embraced her. Style.com routinely features her as a talking head alongside industry power players in its video reviews of ready-to-wear collections. ...

In January, Vogue Italia chose a snapshot of Ms. Redmond wearing thick blue-frame glasses and a floral print blouse by Givenchy as its 'Look of the Day,' praising her personal style as a "mix of femininity, androgyny and irony, which is always cool." The top was a gift from her friend Riccardo Tisci, the label’s designer. In an e-mail, Mr. Tisci wrote: "I’ve known Honey for a long time. I love her style and I like her playing with her masculine and feminine sides."

Ms.
Redmond grew up in the 1970s on the South Side of Chicago in a “very
middle-class, loving African-American family,” she said. Her young
parents often gave parties in their basement on Friday nights and invite
their son, who identified as female from an early age, to lift the
needle on the record player between songs from artists like the Isley
Brothers and Minnie Riperton. “That’s where I got my first education in
music,” she said.

Ms.
Redmond thought that going public about her transition, which took
place after moving to New York (where “there was more of a community”)
might help broaden notions about feminine ideals of beauty in the
fashion and D.J. worlds.

"I’ve always wanted my talent to speak for
itself,” she said. "I didn’t want ‘black’ or ‘trans’ or any of it to
speak for me. Now I am beginning to realize the importance of it because
there is really hardly any visibility for black trans women, especially
in fashion. Hell, there are hardly any black women in fashion. Period." But despite her success, Ms. Redmond said she still can feel like an outsider.

Miss Dijon performed today at the Louis Vuitton Men's F/W 2013 Presentation in Osaka, Japan. She arrived in Japan last night and almost lost her music. "[Left] my laptop on the plane with 4 hard drives full of music because i was over exhausted from traveling," Miss Dijon writes on Facebook. "Just got it back and I'm back in business."

Brava! I first encountered Miss Honey' and her music in the mid 90s via the old Gramaphone Records in Chicago. Miss Honey and I reunited in the early 00s in New York City. I've heard her play everywhere from G in Chelsea to clubs in Montreal and Paris. Love, love, love her music and energy.